Sun QFS and Sun Storage Archive Manager (SAM) 5.0 software is now available. The SAM-QFS environment includes a storage and archive manager along with Sun QFS file system software, which is a high-performance file system, ensuring that data is available at device-rated speeds when requested by one or more users.

SAM-QFS software enables data to be archived to files in another file system through a process known as disk archiving. Data can be archived on an "as-needed" basis, or policies can be defined that determine when data should be archived. Specific schedules for when to archive data also can be set. A standard file system interface is presented and users can read and write files as though they were all on primary disk storage.

Its latest release offers:

Easier Administration Features

Online Grow & Shrink: The ability to resize a file system online, minimizing downtime. Users no longer have to unmount a file system before growing or shrinking the file system.

Non-disruptive upgrades with rolling upgrade feature: The ability to upgrade software in shared environments with multiple shared clients without taking down the rest of the file system.

New Browser-based SAM-QFS Management Interface Enhancements

First Time Configuration page to assist with initial setup

Status-at-a-glance and drill-down features to easiliy monitor large
shared file systems

Solaris Zones partitioning software Support: Shared file systems and archiving file systems can now be used in virtualized environments with Solaris Zones support.

Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF) Support: SMF can now be used to manage error conditions that are unique to shared and archiving file systems during initializations. SMF is now used to control management of the sam-fsd daemon and mounting of shared and archiving file systems at boot time. This management ability enables normal system operations to continue. SMF management
includes such tasks as stopping or restarting SAM-QFS daemons as
needed. Error messages are written to the appropriate SMF services logs.

Solaris Project ID support: Associate Solaris projects with shared and archiving file systems. The benefit is that users can find all the files or directories associated with a project name or project id within a given file hierarchy.

More Performance and Scalability Features

Sideband Database (MySQL) support for faster samfsdump performance: Improve samfsdump performance with
a sideband database. Using the sideband database to restore metadata after archiving 6 million files resulted in 11 times faster dump performance, Sun reports.

More Supported Storage

New Qualified Libraries, Drives and Media: The following devices are now qualified to work
with Sun QFS and
SAM-QFS.